I am indebted to Michael Joseph Jackson who inspired this conversation,
and to my sister Anthea "Anth" Sarah Platt Haupt who contributed
material.

Lopping The Tall Poppies

Oddly enough, we human beings are thrown mostly to deal
with each other's stuff while tacitly ignoring
who we really are. We've got it completely ass backwards.

Just as odd is we mostly wait until people die before we acknowledge
them for what they contribute to us, rather than acknowledge them for
what they contribute to us while they're still alive. All too
often we withhold I Love You from people during their
lives. And then we say great things about them at their
funeral. That's ass backwards as well. It's also too late.

As the human tide, we're not only likely to withhold real, deep,
profound acknowledgement from people who contribute to us
while they're alive - we go further than that. We're known to overtly
criticize, spite, tease, and debase our
heroes
while they're alive for the very artistic expressions they most deserve
our acknowledgement for but ironically only get from us after they
die. We've got it completely ass backwards, this "lopping
the tall poppies" ...

You dispute this? Next time you're in the supermarket checkout line,
thumb through any of the tabloids on the rack placed handily nearby.
They make millions spewing unproven sleeze
and innuendo about people while they're still alive. Then when they
die, they make millions more bringing us
sensitive stories, suitably bloated with fake shock and
dismay, about their demise. You could say this is the job
of a tabloid. But it's you and me who foot the bill for
the millions they rake in. In other words, that's not
really tabloids on the supermarket checkout line rack. That's really
us.

Family Business

Michael Joseph Jackson

For a year I worked with the Jackson family, eventually producing an
art auction at their home
(Michael offered it for the venue) on Hayvenhurst Avenue in Encino,
Southern California to benefit the Reverend Frank Chikane's
South African
Council of Churches and people displaced by apartheid. Producing
the
art auction
was, as expected, an awesome experience, especially given its
beneficiaries, not to mention its hosts. But what I took away with
me from that event was something completely unexpected, something
which forever changed the way I had, in the past, naïvely
accepted as factual anything I read in a newspaper or
watched on television news channels. After the
art auction
I would never read a newspaper or watch television news channels in
quite the same way again ever.

The Jacksons are truly a great family. Great individuals. Great
family. One evening in the kitchen after work, Michael's father
Joseph, his mother Katherine, brother Jermaine and sister Janet
(sans makeup yet still muscularly beautiful) and I were
talking. I was sharing after working with them I would be taking
some time off in Paris when the art auction wrapped. Jermaine got
wistful, saying "Do you know how much I wish I could go somewhere
and just relax and be unrecognized?". That was during the peak of
the Jackson Five
fame.

"That's something" I thought to myself. "You have
unimaginable
wealth and
fame
and everybody loves you. But you can't live a normal life and
walk down the street to the grocery store and show your face in
public for fear of being mobbed ...".

If Joseph is the driver of the Jackson family music
machine,
Katherine is the glue holding their hearts together. Their estate is a
big one given its location. It's quite a few acres. Katherine was
walking from the pool house over to the manor, carrying an assortment
of things precariously in both arms. "Here" I said. "Let me help you
with that.". I walked over to her, reaching out to take some of the
things she was carrying. "Thank You" she said. "I'm alright but please
take this from me.". With a nod of her head, she indicated a large
black book slowly slipping from the top of her pile. It was a Jehovah's
Witness Bible, the "New World" translation. Of all the things Katherine
Jackson was balancing, she wanted me to carry her Bible for her.

The Truth Behind The Lies

At the time, the ass backwards tabloids, attack media, and
shock jock TV and radio hosts had (having discovered it,
no doubt, through meticulous, honest, truthful, fully fact checked
research ...) announced Michael had created a scaled
down version of Disneyland's
famousPirates of the Caribbean ride for his own private
enjoyment - where else but in the basement of his home. Of
course! Isn't that where you would build a scaled down
version of Disneyland's
famousPirates of the Caribbean ride for your own private
enjoyment? In your basement? Of course.

I was in the basement getting a soda from the refrigerator. Joseph was
there. I said "So tell me, Joe: where's the Pirates of the
Caribbean ride?". At first he looked as if he wasn't going to
answer. Then he smiled, and this is what he said:

<quote>

Laurence, I come down to this basement every day. I've also heard them
say that boy built a Pirates of the Caribbean ride down
here. Well, let me tell you something: I've looked for it and I've
looked for it and I've looked for it. I've searched everywhere ...
and I can't find the damn thing anywhere..

<unquote>

Stairway Of Stars

I was about to leave and had already reversed my Ford
Bronco out of its allocated parking space when Joseph
walked over. "You're leaving?" he said. "I'm just going back to my
hotel to shower. I'll be right back" I replied. "You can shower in
Michael's room" he said, pointing across the yard to another smaller
building on the compound built in the same architectural style as the
larger manor house.

A ten second gap of silence ensued. "Excuse me?" I said,
stopped in my tracks by his suggestion. "I can shower where?".
"In Michael's room" he repeated
blandly.
"You'll find fresh towels in the bathroom closet. Leave the ones you
use in the laundry basket when you're done.". Then he turned and walked
back into the manor house.

I parked my Bronco again. Not knowing quite what to
expect, I walked over to the smaller building, opened the door, and
very slowly, started to climb the stairs.

The walls of the stairway are completely wallpapered with
meticulously mounted and framed photographs. They cover the ceiling as
well. Inside the three roomed suite, all the walls and ceilings are
similarly adorned. There are hundreds and hundreds and
hundreds of photographs, each of Michael with well known
worldly figures. Here he is with celebrities. Here he is with
politicians. Here he is with presidents. Here he is with
musicians. Here he is with actors. Here he is with scientists.
Here he is with sports and athletic titans. Here he is with
royalty. It's almost unbelievable. If you read the catalog of
who's who in the world today, he's here with all of
them. And interspersed everywhere, here he is with Joe
Sixpack, with "everyman", with you and me also.

And then, like an optical illusion of recognition,
something turns around. I was seeing the photographs as photographs of
him with all those people,
famous
and otherwise, from all walks of life, from the hallowed halls of
privilege
down to the tenement corridors of the ghetto. It looked like a
collection of photographs of him and all those people. But then I see
what it really is. It isn't a collection of photographs of him with all
those people. It's not him with them. It's a
collection of photographs of all those people, hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of them with him. It's them with
him. They all want to be near him. Princesses,
presidents, football stars, movie stars, rock stars, janitors, the guy
who pumps gas at the corner gas station. They all want to be near
him.

"Amazing!" I think to myself. "Totally amazing!
Everybody wants to be around this guy. Everybody.
The closest human being following him on this scale is
Nelson Mandela.
And, truth be told, on this scale
Nelson Mandela
doesn't even come close.".

Room To Create: You Wanna Be Starting Something

The bedroom is immaculate. Perfectly tidy. Not one thing
is out of place. Everything is arranged just so. There's very
little furniture. A comfortable yet unostentatious bed is placed with a
view out of the window. Very conspicuous by it's total absence is one
hyperbaric chamber. There's not one in this room.
And neither (as I soon find out) is there one anywhere else on the
property. The closest one is probably at Bangor submarine base in
Oregon in case it's needed to treat cases of rapid decompression. The
man who sleeps in this room obviously sleeps in a bed -
like you and me. Hyperbaric chamber? Get a life.

Fully extended on the polished hard wood floor, instead of carpets or
rugs, is a fold up dance floor. Next to the dance floor at the side of
the bed is a simple table on which a yellow legal tablet and three or
four sharpened HB pencils lie. Next to the legal tablet
and pencils is a simple battery operated tape recorder. Nothing fancy.
Nothing professional, you might say. Rather, the kind you might
buy in a Wal~Mart. And beside the table, standing raised on its
own four legs, is a very basic electric keyboard.

Not much of a dance floor ... except on this dance floor
the
moonwalk
was carefully, meticulously worked out and practiced for the first
time.
Not much of a legal tablet ... except on this legal tablet
the words of Beat It were first written - first this way,
then that way, then erased and written this way again -
for the first
time.
Not much of a tape recorder ... except this tape recorder
captured a hummed what was to become Billie Jean ... the
first time Billie Jean was ever hummed. Not much of an
electric keyboard ... except on this electric keyboard the
melody of We Are The World was teased out -
plink ... plunk - for the first time.

Presence On The Balcony

I walk through a pool of sunlight across the dance floor over to the
window, outside of which is a tiny balcony encircled by a wooden
balustrade. The branches of a tree growing up from the garden below
overhang the balcony adding shade like an au natural
umbrella canopy. I grab the balustrade and lean slightly forward, my
arms taking my weight. Standing in this special spot, looking out onto
the world from this special spot, I have no thoughts, no concerns, no
fears. Just peace, and a kind of what I later distinguished as a
compassionate calm. And at that moment I feel a tap on my
shoulder.

Someone, it seems, has entered the room behind me and must be standing
quietly near me.
"God,
it's him" I say to myself before turning around. Then I turn around ...
and the room is empty.

No! It's not possible! Someone (or
some-thing) definitely tapped me on the shoulder. Of that
I'm certain. Yet there's no one in the room except me. Then I
see it. At my feet. A twig, a stick from the tree had dropped and
tapped me on the shoulder. I was tapped (or dubbed like a
knight) on the shoulder by a stick from that shade tree in that special
place.

Exchanging Gifts

The
art auction
was over - successful way beyond anyone's wildest dreams, but over. It
was time to say goodbye. With a broad sweep of his hand, Joseph showed
me an array of artwork in the vestibule of the manor house.

"What would you like? Take anything you like. I'd like you to have
something you'll remember us by.". I said "Thanks Joe. May I please
take this with me?". I held up the stick. A look of puzzlement slowly
crossed his kindly face. "But that's a stick, Laurence.
That's what you want? Take something else. Please.".
"It's not just a stick, Joe" I said. "It's the stick. It's
the stick which tapped me. And yes, if it's OK with you,
this is the only thing I want.".

Some months later when I was traveling in the Transkei
region of eastern
South African,
I came across an African tribesman at the side of the road making bowls
from tree trunk sections. It was painstaking work, especially given the
primitive tools he used. But the finished bowls were works of art. It
suddenly occurred to me "This would be an ideal gift for
Joseph and Katherine", so I bought one and took it back with me to the
United States.

I called Joseph from San Francisco to ask if I could drop by to deliver
the gift. He countered by offering to take me out to dinner. I flew
from San Francisco to Van Nuys airport, hired a car and drove back to
their Encino home on Hayvenhurst Avenue - now no longer an outdoor art
gallery, now just a family home once again.

Joseph and Katherine were like little children with the wooden bowl.
They asked all kinds of questions (what was the sculptor like? where
did he live? what other pieces did he make?). It was a fitting gift for
a great family. Then, accompanied by a body guard, Joseph took me to a
tucked away restaurant I would never ever have discovered
by myself. It was black owned (there's nothing significant about that -
it just happened to be black owned), and the food was basic, delicious
home cookin' soul food. Clearly Joseph ate there often.
The people there were very respectful of his privacy: "Hi, Joe" as he
came in, and that was it. No mob scene here.

Epilogue

Now the moral of this story is

Don't wait for people to die before acknowledging what they
contribute to you;

It's way bigger to say to someone I Love
You when they're alive than it is to say great things about
them at their funeral;

The voices of millions and millions and millions of
hearts can be shouted over by just one very small minded person with
an axe to grind and a quick buck to make;

Take everything your see, read, and hear reported in the
news media as fact with a big pinch of
salt;

When a man is loved by millions and millions and
millions of people of all ages in all countries around
the world without regard to skin color or sex or financial standing
or class or creed, better listen up. That speaks volumes.